Project Partners

 

Headquartered in Hannover, Germany, HaCon creates and develops high-quality software solutions for traffic, transport and logistics. With over 25 years of experience and a dedicated team of more than 170 IT and transport planning specialists, HaCon has established itself as a leading European player for planning, scheduling and information solutions.

The timetable information system HAFAS is used by transportation companies and networks all over the world. A powerful solution for timetable construction and capacity management, HaCon’s train planning system TPS enjoys a growing European user base.

In addition to developing software, HaCon consults and assists its customers with projects in rail freight transport and combined transport in particular. HaCon’s interdisciplinary consulting team draws on many years of experience with European R&D projects (e.g. CREAM, TIGER). Customers from politics and economics rely on HaCon’s expertise when it comes to freight rail transport in general and the requisition and negotiation of subsidies in particular.

www.hacon.de

The Bentheimer Eisenbahn AG has been founded already in 1895. Today the Bentheimer Eisenbahn is one of the major private railway companies in Germany. Main activities are passenger transport, rail freight and logistics as well as travel services. With their own network of nearly 100 km, the Bentheimer Eisenbahn is strongly connected in North-western Germany and perceived as a highly professional partner for rail freight.

With 14 diesel locomotives and 250 employees a freight volume of 1,200,000 t is transported every year. Partners are DB Schenker and other railway companies which are supported by last mile collection and distribution services of wagons as well as for the operation of block trains. Additionally Bentheimer Eisenbahn is shareholder of the intermodal terminal EuroTerminal Coevorden with a handling capacity of 100,000 TEU per year.

By being connected to the international freight village GVZ Europark Coevorden-Emlichheim, which is situated directly on the border between Germany and the Netherlands, the Bentheimer Eisenbahn also offers safe and reliable international cross-border freight transportation. The Bentheimer Eisenbahn has different subsidiaries e.g. the forwarding company Kraftverkehr Emsland, which is organising also trucking services for collection and delivery of cargo.

www.bentheimer-eisenbahn-ag.de

The Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich) is the largest technical university of Switzerland educating about 17,000 students in sciences, engineering, technology and management. The Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT) consists of the three research groups Transport Systems, Private Transport and Transport Planning. The Transport Systems group focuses on research and education in public transport systems, transport production systems and freight transportation systems and is well connected with other universities and the railway industry in Switzerland and throughout Europe.

www.ivt.ethz.ch

Eureka Navigation Solutions AG develops and supplies autarchic tracking and communications solutions for logistics applications and fleet management.
Eureka holds a leading position in the product segment of railway telematics systems with more than 16,000 delivered NavMaster devices. A new development of a “Seamless Tracking” for indoor and outdoor positioning was successfully tested in the pilot project “PATS” for positioning of components within Airbus’ assembly of the A380.

Based on a distributed communication principle, Eureka developed a mobile data communication system within the CREAM project. It allows the operation of battery-operated radio sensors in a stationary or mobile network of telematics gateways. The ENS RodoTAG® radio sensor records and transmits the mileage of freight wagons, using this new communication technology.

Data services such as the tracking portal “aJourOnline”, the XML tracking service and the mileage recording and transmitting data service, give Eureka customers worldwide access to the location and status of their assets. A data link to the Eureka data servers enables the customer’s ERP and information systems to receive process the telematics data in real time.

www.eureka.de

The rail freight pool of Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer (SNCF) is the number 1 rail freight transport provider in France and the number 3 in Europe. It is made up of railway companies, combined transport operators and rail services providers. Its capabilities and expertise make the SNCF rail freight pool to a major player in the European transport and logistics sector. Total sales amount to € 2.09 billion and 15,000 employees are working inside this pool. The railway operators include Fret SNCF and VFLI as well as the European subsidiaries: Captrain Deutschland, Captrain Italia etc.

Customers are thus guaranteed services tailored to their needs and adapted to their business sector: steel, agriculture, automotive, coal, chemicals, consumer goods and quarry products. The railway operators offer shippers end-to-end service, striving continually to boost their customers’ performance, no matter what their requirements or activity. The offered transport services are adapted to shippers’ specific requirements in their markets, comprising loading/unloading and constitution of trains, block train services and multi-block / multi-customer services.

fret.sncf.com

IB Innovation is born from the great attention paid by Interporto Bologna SpA to the evolution of transport and logistics and for this purpose is encouraging and supporting R&D initiatives. Both for the excellent performances and results achieved in this field and in light of the objective above mentioned, Interporto Bologna has taken the strategic decision to outsource the “New projects & Development” department, turning it into a company’s spin-off and establishing “Consorzio IB Innovation” a non-profit body that is focused on R&D activities and further sustainable business exploitations. Key objectives of IB Innovation are to

  • Expand its attention by continuing to invest in R&D projects for innovating logistics and multimodal transport solutions with impacts in the following sectors: infrastructure, operations, standardisation of business models, information technologies;
  • Endorse of the dialogue and collaboration with the key stakeholders, mainly transport and logistics operators already located within the Bologna Freight Village conceived as a Multimodal Platform;
  • Improve of synergies concerning producers and relationships with the main industrial districts of the Emilia Romagna Region in order to enhance and exploit the results coming out from R&D activities.

www.bo.interporto.it

NEWOPERA Aisbl is a Belgian registered international non-profit association aiming at promoting the European freight mobility system more competitive for the users. NEWOPERA Aisbl was founded after conclusion of the EC funded NEWOPERA project (NEWOPERA stands for “New European Wish: Operating Project for a European Rail Network). NEWOPERA Aisbl is the leading promoter of the 2020/2025 Rail Freight dedicated/priority lines concept, developed by the project. To this effect a lot of research and activities were carried out, published and disseminated. The list of projects initiated and being involved in includes NEWOPERA, TIGER, TIGER DEMO and MARATHON.

The knowledge base of NEWOPERA Aisbl is constituted by the association members which are leading stakeholders and experts in the rail freight business (e.g. CER, Sogemar, Italcontainer, Interporto Bologna), working groups and by the European wide network of another NEWOPERA member, The European Freight and Logistics Leaders Forum (F&L) having as members about 80 leading companies in 16 different countries. These companies are the ultimate cargo movers and represent the key decision makers for modal shift.

www.newopera.org

SBB Cargo is the rail freight subsidiary of the Swiss Federal Railway (SBB) owned by the Swiss Confederation. In Switzerland SBB Cargo is market leader in rail freight and the only provider of single wagonload traffic. The basic SWL network consists of 323 delivery points throughout Switzerland.

SBB Cargo is part of the Xrail alliance for international wagonload services and has two subsidiaries:

SBB Cargo International is a joint venture with Hupac for international freight train services. The company is in charge of SBB Cargo’s SWL activities in Italy and comprises the operation of an independent SWL network in North Italy.

ChemOil Logistics is specialised in transports of chemicals and petroleum and operates the ChemLink wagonload network comprising destinations in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. In 2011 the ChemLink transport concept has been awarded by the German rail freight forwarding association IBS (Interessengemeinschaft der Bahnspeditionen).

www.sbbcargo.com

The Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; eng.: Berlin Institute of Technology) is in charge of the education of about 30,000 students and 1,800 Ph.D. students. In addition to the core subjects in natural sciences and engineering, TU Berlin hosts institutes specialised in planning, humanities, social sciences and economics. Therefore not only hardware development such as the construction of vehicles is available but also planning, sociological and environmental aspects of transport are covered.

TU Berlin is participating in ViWaS with the Department of Land and Sea Transport Systems (Institut für Land- und Seeverkehr – ILS), specifically the Chair of Track and Railway Operations.

The competencies of the Chair of Track and Railway Operations are organised in three areas: railway operation, railway track and strategy. The optimisation of operational processes, efficiency, energy consumption and environmental impacts are the basic targets for all areas of research. One of the main research fields in the area of strategy is Innovation in Rail Freight Traffic. Here, the team works on current questions how to improve rail freight traffic, to make it more competitive and to integrate it in transport chains. In addition the chair owns two laboratories: One for the development and test of track and vehicle components, and one for the simulation of railway operations including the corresponding software and a EUDD+ mock up.

www.railways.tu-berlin.de

The Swiss based Wascosa AG is recognised as an innovative and high quality leasing company of freight wagons in Europe. The emphasis is on tank cars for the petroleum and compressed gas industry. In addition to that various other freight cars, such as container wagons are provided. In fact the Wascosa fleet comprises 5,000 units in total. 25% of them are intermodal wagons.

Wascosa has set itself the goal of becoming the most innovative freight car leaser. This leads to the obligation of satisfying the highest customer demands and constantly setting new trends in the freight car industry.

www.wascosa.ch